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Of the psychology of the great common multitude of baseball “bleachers,” I learned almost nothing.  But as regards the world of success and luxury (which, of course, held me a willing captive firmly in its soft and powerful influence throughout my stay), I should say that there was an appreciable amount of self-hypnotism in its attitude toward baseball.  As if the thriving and preoccupied business man murmured to his soul, when the proper time came:  “By the way, these baseball championships are approaching.  It is right and good for me that I should be boyishly excited, and I will be excited.  I must not let my interest in baseball die.  Let’s look at the sporting-page and see how things stand.  And I’ll have to get tickets, too!” Hence possibly what seemed to me a superficiality and factitiousness in the excitement of the more expensive seats, and a too-rapid effervescence and finish of the excitement when the game was over.

The high fever of inter-university football struck me as a more authentic phenomenon.  Indeed, a university town in the throes of an important match offers a psychological panorama whose genuineness can scarcely be doubted.  Here the young men communicate the sacred contagion to their elders, and they also communicate it to the young women, who, in turn, communicate it to the said elders—­and possibly the indirect method is the surer!  I visited a university town in order to witness a match of the highest importance.  Unfortunately, and yet fortunately, my whole view of it was affected by a mere nothing—­a trifle which the newspapers dealt with in two lines.

When I reached the gates of the arena in the morning, to get a glimpse of a freshmen’s match, an automobile was standing thereat.  In the automobile was a pile of rugs, and sticking out of the pile of rugs in an odd, unnatural, horizontal way was a pair of muddy football boots.  These boots were still on the feet of a boy, but all the rest of his unconscious and smashed body was hidden beneath the rugs.  The automobile vanished, and so did my peace of mind.  It seemed to me tragic that that burly infant under the rugs should have been martyrized at a poor little morning match in front of a few sparse hundreds of spectators and tens of thousands of unresponsive empty benches.  He had not had even the glory and meed of a great multitude’s applause.  When I last inquired about him, at the end of the day, he was still unconscious, and that was all that could be definitely said of him; one heard that it was his features that had chiefly suffered in the havoc, that he had been defaced.  If I had not happened to see those muddy football boots sticking out, I should have heard vaguely of the accident, and remarked philosophically that it was a pity, but that accidents would occur, and there would have been the end of my impression.  Only I just did happen to see those muddy boots sticking out.

[Illustration:  THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR]